Thursday, December 9, 2010

A caution, this is really a long post. We are in last month of the year. I am already thinking about things I want to achieve in next year. This year for the first time I am finding it difficult to find the goals, because from last 4-5 years my goals always revolved around money and I kind of do very well in that department without much of the effort. Hence, while setting last year's goal, I actually for the first time added some non-PF goals in my life.

This revealed one of my big weaknesses to me, something that I can exploit to improve me. I so much hate writing fail for any of the goal that I consciously started working on those things that I used to hate at one time. And I know this is a PF blog and I generally don't write about personal experiences here other than one’s related to money, but I think that my goals for next year will hardly be PF dominated.

Now I look at goal setting as the technique to improve those areas in my life that I really want to improve. So in my year end review, I want to visit not only how many pass vs. fail but also what was hidden motivation behind all my goals.

These are my goals for 2010: 1) Continue learning new dishes to cook. One new dish per week.Result: 7 Pass vs. 5 Fail I used to hate cooking. When I got married some 3 years back, I couldn't even prepare a decent tea. I am lucky enough that my in-laws and my husband in particular are OK with it. In NOIDA we had a cook since beginning and my husband will happily prepare breakfast and tea for me (and I am a tea addict).

What got to me to want to change it? LOVE. Yes honestly, I love my hubby and he loves food. He is a big big foodie. After 2 years of my marriage, I started getting those feelings that I want to cook for him, I want him to say good things about my food and so on. In fact, I tried doing this even in second year of marriage, but resolution never lasted more than 2 weeks.

Setting this goal helped me improve my cooking. And after moving to Hyderabad I realized that it’s very difficult to get a decent cook of our taste here. Now I cook dinner everyday which is a big achievement for a person like me.

2) Continue to be on budget.Result: 8 Pass vs. 4 Fail What can I say more than the fact that I love budget and personal finance else why will I have this blog. Plus I like to see my savings grow rather than expenses grow. I started with a set budget to spend per month and exceeded it by 10K as per the need (see I am flexible and not at all that rigid or was it like I hated idea of writing fail over here). But I stayed in budget for most part of the year.

3) Start saving for prepayment of mortgage. 2L should be saved for same.Result: 9 Pass vs. 3 Fail We survived a pay cut in 2009 and mortgage has been my first liability ever in life. So I realized the importance of reducing the mortgage amount by prepaying the same. This goal somewhere got modified as save 6 EMIs as emergency fund because my DH was not in favor of prepaying mortgage. I saved 9 EMIs as emergency fund, way more than my set goal.

4) Contribute to retirement as per the plan.Result: 12 Pass vs. 0 FailWell, this part requires least of the effort as everything I do is automated. So I can hardly fail on it unless I don’t have funds in my accounts which have not happened even once in last year. Thanks Murphy and GOD for that.

5) Be less obsessive on daily tracking of things.Result: 10 Pass vs. 2 FailI think I already confessed here that I was obsessed for tracking every penny spent. But then I realized that I should overcome my obsession or in fact was forced by my DH for same (he doesn’t like to be accountable for number of Pepsi’s he drinks in a day).

A confession, my life is stress free once I got rid of this habit. I still track how much we spend in a month but no need to know how much went for Pepsi and how much for other things.

And one last thing to mention on this point, I have started the tracking again because I want to get the idea of expenses we incur in new place and was suggested by DH himself but it is stress free so far.

6) Learn to swim.Result: BIG FAILI love water and that’s why always wanted to learn to swim. And I have a sinusitis problem which once again made it impossible for me to swim. This will be in my list of things to do before I die.

7) Improve healthy eating.Result: 8 Pass vs. 4 FailThough number shows another picture I can say that it is still close to failure. I need major improvement health wise. That’s one area of my life that I neglected till date (I was almost about to reveal my age. OMG). This area needs major focus next year.

8) Earning Rs 50250 (2010*25) extra in 2010Result: 9 Pass vs. 3 FailI don’t do any extra work other then my full time job and house hold chores and I don’t pay myself for latter. This mainly comes from passive income, reward points and gifts. Yes I actually try to save all the cash gifts I receive and some amount corresponding to all the materialistic gifts as well from my budgeted amount. Did I hear insane? Well I’ll say it is just a mental technique to improve my savings.

About Indian Thoughts

I am an Indian. A working women balancing life, family and work. And always enjoying the life in the process.
Numbers crunching is my hobby, so PF comes very naturally to me.
Would you like to join my ever-optimist and ever-smiling journey of day-to-day financial life?